by michal frackowiak
on 12 May 2010 21:17
I would like to apologize everyone who was trying to use Wikidot for the last few hours, but could not log-in or could not edit pages, without getting any reasonable error message from Wikidot. It took us more than a crazy hour to nail the problem and fix it.
The problem was caused by a piece of profiling code that was added to Wikidot by one of our developers. The code was added outside of our usual workflow, not even through the our version control system (git), thus skipping the internal review process. Moreover, the code was causing an error in a few places, but was silently damping all error messages, and not leaving any trace in the logs. This fooled us and we were rather suspecting lower-level problems with our main server.
Thankfully we got a bunch of emails with reports that something is wrong with Wikidot (thanks!), so we could start working on it quickly.
This was a clear mistake on our side and I am sorry for the problems it have caused. I believe we will make our internal process stricter, and avoid such problems in the future.
I was wondering what the problem was, thanks for patching things up again! :)
Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.
2805 Continuity Guide
Although as a freeloader I'm probably not in a position to complain, but please, guys, when something gets broken, make a post about it on main wikidot page the moment you confirm it is indeed broken. This way you save us a lot of installing other browsers to see if the problem persists, checking proxy settings, reinstalling certificates, trying to login to wikidot from a different PC, etc.
So you'd like Wikidot to post a blog post as soon as they discover a problem, then edit it when the problem is fixed? (instead of just posting when the problem is fixed)
That sounds like a good idea to me! I agree.
Edit: Thanks wikidot for fixing problems so quickly ;-) I didn't have any problems as I was sleeping though :)
Shane Smith ★ Wikidot Freelancer (Hire me!)
— Sites: My Website, Personal Blog
— Projects: STE Editor, Wikimated, Wikidot 101 (Video Tutorials), Wikidot SubReddit
Good point, I am sorry we did not announce we have problems. But honestly — it was quite a stressful situation. I did post an update to Twitter as soon as I confirmed there is a problem, but at that time we were not even sure what is the scale of the problem, and we thought we can fix it within a few minutes.
I think the easiest way to communicate failures and problems would be through our Twitter account at @wikidot, because it is independent of our infrastructure. Those who follow us on Twitter were instantly informed, but we would need to clearly point to it, e.g. "We have problems, check out this page".
Right now we are having an internal discussion how to 1. avoid such problems, 2. be alerted when they occur, 3. inform users, 4. solve asap. I think we are pretty good at this, and we already have very robust ways of dealing with issues, but specific classes of problems often require individual approach.
Cheers!
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
Wikidot does have an information system that switches on when the system goes down. I tried to enter www.wikidot.com and I got the message that something was wrong (it was written in more detail, but I can't remember now what exactly), that developers are aware of it, and that they are working on it to resolve it, as well as the estimate time of an hour for system to be up again. So, I really think that Wikidot is great when it comes to informing the users what is going on when the system goes down…
The blog post wouldn't work if you cannot access Wikidot domain at all…
Vir bonus miser vocari, at esse non potest miser.
The usual blog wouldn't work but the Wikidot team has a basic website ready to keep us informed: they just have to switch the DNS to this site as they did once when the Snowleopard got so many hits…
Which site?
Was I the only one who saw that message?
Vir bonus miser vocari, at esse non potest miser.
Thanks for twittering the problem.
I suppose that if no else could edit, then neither could the devs.
So twitter in this case, has proved very useful.
.Goal NHGC
I just want to say THANK YOU for the diligent work you did on finding and resolving the problem. I think I would much rather have you working on the problem than stopping to post a message that you were having difficulties, when it was quite obvious to those of us who couldn't log on.
Thanks again!
Much respect for IT
Thanks for the response and the quick work resolving the issue! I would agree a quick post that you're working on it would prove helpful. Understand we're not in a perfect world and 'poop' happens, but for those of us who rely on this site for business purposes, the post would ease our minds that its being worked. This event may push me over the edge and force me to join Twitter. :)
Thanks again all!
Once you do, you'll never leave it. Be warned ;-)
Shane Smith ★ Wikidot Freelancer (Hire me!)
— Sites: My Website, Personal Blog
— Projects: STE Editor, Wikimated, Wikidot 101 (Video Tutorials), Wikidot SubReddit
So true, man. So true. Even though I just use it to contact AE staff and mods! xDDD
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AQWorlds
HeroSmash Hero ~ HeroSmash Villian
I am very very very new to this wikidot.. my question is how to untag pages or delete tags?
Just scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on "Tags" between "Edit" and "History" (or "Discuss" on some pages that have that enabled).
It will only appear if you have permission to see it. If it's your site, then you should see it down there.
Edit: Just to clarify… you use the same link to add tags as you do to delete tags. And welcome to Wikidot! ;-)
Shane Smith ★ Wikidot Freelancer (Hire me!)
— Sites: My Website, Personal Blog
— Projects: STE Editor, Wikimated, Wikidot 101 (Video Tutorials), Wikidot SubReddit
Just yesterday, I have problems with my themes on my website. Currently, I am using the built-in themes but I cannot set the theme variant to "no side bar". When I set the "no side bar" and then save, it would indicate it was saved but when I refreshed the page, the theme variant is still set by "default".
I thought my problems were solved after seeing this blog post, but after I read it, it was a different problem. My problem still persist after attempting to set the theme variants again.
If you'd like, you can invite me or one of the other community admins as a temporary admin of your site, and tell us what you'd like to set the theme to. We'll see if we can get it working, and post a bug report if we find a problem.
Bug reports usually go here: http://feedback.wikidot.com (but from your post, I'm not exactly sure what the problem is and there might be an easy solution to it).
Shane Smith ★ Wikidot Freelancer (Hire me!)
— Sites: My Website, Personal Blog
— Projects: STE Editor, Wikimated, Wikidot 101 (Video Tutorials), Wikidot SubReddit
Thanks to your offer. I did various things before seeing your comment.
I cleared my cookies. I signed out and sign back again. I tried creating another site today and I tried setting the admin:manage with default theme variant and then changing it back with no side bar again. Even with the new site, the problem still exist. It seems the problem lies on my account.
I will invite you as a temporary admin to check it out. : )
The system and group relies on humans to make and manage, and humans are imperfect, thus the system and group is imperfect. It's always going to happen once in a blue moon, so you can't be so angry when it does happen unless it happens again and again and again. That is when you get very unhappy. =)
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HeroSmash Hero ~ HeroSmash Villian
Has the problem reported anything to do with the fact wikidot is not rendering the html codes between
[[html]] and [[/html]]? For example, go to http://mateas.wikidot.com/condicoes, where you can check and see such html environment used in the source, though nothing shows when viewing the page (I have tried IE8 and Chrome in two different computers - one with Windows 7, another with XP - in two different locations - two different cities - and the outcome is the same!).
Let me add that this was working a few days ago.
I did some testing and it seems like there's some kind of problem with HTML blocks at the moment. I've reported it as a bug here: HTML blocks not working properly
Shane Smith ★ Wikidot Freelancer (Hire me!)
— Sites: My Website, Personal Blog
— Projects: STE Editor, Wikimated, Wikidot 101 (Video Tutorials), Wikidot SubReddit
Intereasting workaround found by Tsangk:
*http://sandbox.wikidot.com/tsangk:htmlblock ( taken out of the bug comments)
This can only be a workaround…
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